


The Crepuscular Region

by MaatMons



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Homework, Magical Artifacts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 06:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6144781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaatMons/pseuds/MaatMons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are too many cursed artifacts in the Harley household.  It makes doing homework difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crepuscular Region

Jake and Jade sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table. They were reading from identical copies of a Mathematics textbook. The nice thing about being twins was, they were always studying the same material in school. They were usually even in the same classes! So they could team up on homework and get it done in half the time. 

"Alright," said Jake, "for this next one we just have to flip a coin one-hundred times and tally the number of heads and tails." He reached into his right pocket and fished around. "Hmm," he said, as he switched to searching his left pocket. 

"Don't worry," said Jade. "I knew we were going to need a coin at some point. This chapter's on probability, after all. I grabbed this from Grandpa's study earlier." She reached into her own pocket and produced a large gold coin. 

"Blimey! Way to think ahead Sis! That grinning skull should probably be heads. What's on the other side?" 

"A dragon sitting on a pile of corpses." 

"Well, dragons have tails, so that works out well." 

Jade flipped the coin into the air, then caught it and slapped it onto the back of her other hand with a practiced motion. This was, after all, how they always decided who got to ride in front or be the first to play with new toy. Usually they borrowed a quarter from grandpa instead of an ancient whatever-this-thing-was, but the principle was the same. "Heads!" she exclaimed. 

"Oops, let me just make up a table here" Jake said. He flipped his notebook over to a new page and drew a line down the center. At the top of the page he wrote "H" on one side and "T" on the other, then he drew a line under the headings and finished up by marking one tick in the heads column. "Okay, I'm ready to go." 

Jade flipped the coin again, this time getting tails, which Jake dutifully noted down. Another flip, another mark in the tails column. And so on for the next flour flips as well. 

"Quite the fun on tails!" Jake mused. 

"Yeah," Jade said as she picked the coin up again, "I-" She cut herself off suddenly. She was looking at the tails side of the coin, but she was sure this was the side that had been down a moment ago. She turned the coin over, and was greeted by an exact duplicate of the dragon from the first side. "Jake, look at this. I feel like I'm going crazy." She said and handed the coin to her twin. "It's a double-tailed coin now, but it wasn't before? Do they even make double-tailed coins?" 

"I've only ever heard of double-headed ones, but who knows with these long-dead civilizations." He took the coin in his hand and examined it closely. That was definitely the dragon and corpse pile they'd assigned to tails. He turned the coin over. That was definitely the dragon and corpses again. He didn't notice any difference between the two sides. He turned the coin over again. This time the newly-revealed side was the grinning skull they'd assigned to heads. He turned the coin over once more and found the grinning skull on the opposite side too. "Okay, now it's a double- _headed_ coin." he said, as he gingerly set the coin down, then pushed it away with his pencil. 

For many minutes, both twins stared suspiciously at the coin. But it just sat there, as inanimate objects tend to. 

Tentatively, Jake began "You know, we'll only lose a few point if we skip this problem." 

"Nuts to that! I'm not letting some shiny little disc beat me with its stupid shape-shifting antics!" Jade snatched the coin and gave it a flip. Extra hard, to show it who's boss. 

A shape flew over to Jake's side of the table. He dropped his pencil, but managed to catch it. "Got a little wild with that one, didn't you?" 

"What do you mean?" asked Jade. She had the coin sitting on the back of her left had, just like she did after all the other flips. 

Jake opened his hand and looked at the coin within. It was an exact copy of the coin his twin was holding. He looked at his coin, then at Jade's, then back at his own. "I don't know how to mark this on the sheet." 

"Forget the sheet, we're in big trouble! We broke Grandpa's coin!"

" _I_ didn't break it." 

"Shut up and help me fix this."

"Fine, let me think." Jake said. He sat pondering for a moment. "I know! It duplicated itself when you flipped it, so maybe it will _un_ duplicate itself if we flip both of them at the same time!" 

Jade gave her brother a look that was less than impressed. Then she sighed heavily. "Well, it's worth a shot. Try to make them hit each other. Maybe that will help." 

The twins readied their coins for flipping. They sat tense, waiting. The flips had to be perfectly coordinated, both in timing and direction. But they didn't need any signal or discussion. They knew each other's minds inside and out. When necessary, they could act as a single unit. Without warning, they launched their coins in tandem. They tumbled end-over-end along mirror-image paths toward a head-on collision. Behold the power of twins! 

Four coins struck simultaneously in midair, then clattered noisily to the table. Eight eyes stared down in disbelief. Slowly, the owners of the eyes each looked to one side, then the other. Four people sat around the table, two Jakes and two Jades. All of them began screaming at the same time.

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is a slightly-altered retelling of a dream I had.


End file.
